Albert Herda’s Idea

Albert Herda had an idea. He knew about the Alaska Highway. In 1946 it approached its fourth birthday. If a trucker, Albert thought, could load his truck with things tough, and expensive, to get in Fairbanks, Alaska and then get his truck to Fairbanks over the new highway he could make a nice profit.

Link to another Highway trucker–Rusty Dow

People who knew the road warned him. That truck would face 1,450 miles of dirt and gravel, iced and snowbound in winter, billowing dust and plagued by ravenous mosquitoes in summer.  And the route offered virtually no services, no fuel stops, no mechanics… just endless miles of empty road.

Albert jumped in his car and drove to Fairbanks to see for himself. And he returned to North Dakota thinking he could truck the Alaska Highway—admittedly a difficult proposition, but a feasible one.

Back in Minot he found financing and made a deal with a produce wholesaler in Glasgow, Montana. On November 10, 1946 he left Minot with three trucks loaded with meat, flour and produce. A fourth truck equipped with a snowplow, spare parts, emergency supplies and 1,600 gallons of fuel joined the caravan in Montana.

Charcoal heaters in the trucks kept the cargo from freezing. And Herda kept a blowtorch beside him in the cab. On the way one truck broke through the ice into a river. It took 64 hours to get it free and back on the road. But the caravan reached Fairbanks on January 3, 1947, the first commercial trucks to travel the Alaska Highway.

In the fall Albert loaded his trucks with Washington State fruit and did the trip again—this time in just 9 days.

A link to trucking the Highway today

The Herda Alaska Truck Line carried freight to Fairbanks until 1963.